166:31:00 Cernan: Okay, Bob, I'd like the range and bearing to the...We're roll...We...

166:31:04 Schmitt: How did you get in reverse?

166:31:05 Cernan: I don't know. (Pause) Okay. We're rolling, and I'd like the range and bearing to the next...

166:31:14 Parker: Okay. We want a heading of around 125, and there's going to be a small turn, I think it's at SWP Crater at 225 and 3.4, there'll be a slight turn. That's a heading of 125 is what you should start
out on.

166:31:33 Cernan: That's what I'm looking for.

166:31:35 Parker: And 225 and 3.4...

166:31:36 Schmitt: I thought we were bypassing...

166:31:40 Parker: No, we just do that...

166:31:41 Schmitt: I thought we were bypassing SWP.

166:31:42 Parker: ...during the mission planning stages.

[Jack thinks that both he and Bob are making a sarcastic
reference to some pre-flight discussions about SWP, but doesn't remember the
context. As Bob has said, the cuff checklist shows a slight course change
as they round the southwest rim of SWP.]

166:31:49 Cernan: (Waits for Bob to finish) 225 and 3.4. Okay.

[Cernan - "I've been reading ahead and I want to warn
you that there's another important geologic observation coming up at
166:33:28."]

[Cernan - "I tell you what. It may go back to my days in the Navy when
we were doing low-altitude run-ins, and we would take a big sectional map.
Your track might turn you left and right and south and we would cut the map
in sections and we'd paste together so that you'd always have the navigation line - the run-in line - going away from you so that you were always flying forward no matter whether you were flying north or south or whatever. Even today I fly that way. I turn maps and mentally strip it in the direction I'm going. So, this could be an evolution of that."]

[Schmitt - " I think that's right. I think that Dave (Scott) and John (Young) used the map. Gene had the map up in front of him, but he wanted it translated into a strip format for the cuff checklist."]

[Cernan - "It's like a watch. Where's the most convenient place to put a watch? On a wrist. Not in a pocket. Pocket watches are nice, but the most convenient place to put it is where you can glance at it easily. That's why the cuff checklist, itself, was a great idea; and putting the maps in made it even better."]

[Schmitt - "The idea of the checklist, itself, goes back to Apollo 8. Bill Anders asked for one listing the things he was going to describe from lunar orbit. It wasn't a cuff checklist, but the checklist that Neil had sewn on his sleeve evolved from that."]

[Cernan - "The support crews deserve credit for a lot of these little ideas. Something might have been a problem on a previous mission and someone like Ed Gibson (who came up with the idea of the stay-open, spring-bound cuff checklist for Apollo 12) could come up with a simple fix that people on the prime crew might not have had time to think about. And, by the time of Apollo 17, the cuff checklist wasn't just a checklist of the things you wanted to do, it was a geologic flight plan."]

166:32:09 Schmitt: Sure hard to tell where north is on it, though. (Pause)

[Schmitt - "Now, as this line indicates, from my
geologic experience - to contrast with Gene's Navy experience - you're used
to keeping the map oriented one way and translate, in your mind, where north
is. I never did it very well, but a lot of people are able to do
that."]

166:32:18 Cernan: Trying my best to keep you out of those slopes.

166:32:22 Schmitt: That's all right. I'm learning to tolerate it.
(Pause) Okay, Bob. We're pretty close now to...No, we're not. We're still
about 100 meters, I think, from where the break in slope is with the plains.
But we're away from the block population except for scattered...(except for)
two great big blocks out ahead of us, this side of the SWP Crater. But the
average population is down to the 1 percent or less, again. (That is, one
percent of the surface is covered by rocks ("blocks") bigger than
about one centimeter.) That average population really never changed up in
here. Just the big blocks were around. (Pause) I saw some little...

166:33:13 Parker: (Lost under the Public Affairs Commentator)

166:33:14 Schmitt: ...half-meter to one-third-meter, glass-lined, pit-bottom craters. (Pause) Look at the size of those things (the big blocks)!

[Jacks traverse photos are AS17-142-
21671 to
21691.
Frame 21674 is a photo of the "big mamoos". Mamoos is slang for breasts.]

166:33:32 Schmitt: (Laughs) And it looks like they're probably the same thing that we sampled. They have the inclusions in them, white inclusions. They look like a mixture of the gray of the re-crystallized breccia, and the tan-gray of the anorthositic gabbro. (Pause) That must...Hey, look! There's Van Serg. Blocky-rimmed crater. That's the other side of Cochise there. See it?

166:34:13 Cernan: Yeah. Way over there.

166:34:15 Schmitt: Yeah! Cochise is certainly a shallow crater, although we knew that. It doesn't have any...It only has one place I can see that has any blocks on the inner wall of Cochise. Otherwise, it has a surface much like what we're driving on - for walls and for the floor. One place on the south-southeast wall, there is a concentration of blocks much like we saw in Henry or in Horatio. But the rest of the crater seems to be pretty well mantled. (Pause) Van Serg is a very blocky rim crater, big blocks up on the rim.

166:34:53 Cernan: Do you have a lot of static, Jack, or is it just me?

166:34:54 Schmitt: No, I think it's just you. People are always giving you static. (Pause)

166:35:02 Cernan: Bob, if you are still reading me, I'm looking at the Sculptured Hills, and I still have that (impression of an) old man, wrinkled-face appearance, even up close at this Sun angle. And those wrinkles go from, generally, upslope at the west to downslope at the east.

166:35:22 Schmitt: Hey, are you...No, you're right at the edge of
Cochise. Aren't you?

166:35:28 Cernan: Where? Right here?

166:35:29 Schmitt: Yeah. Aren't you?

166:35:30 Cernan: No, we're not that close. Uh-uh. Cochise is up
at...See that rim where those blocks are?

[Jack is probably saying that his hands are getting warm;
either that or he has noticed the battery temperatures. However, only the
temperature gauge for battery 1 is working - the other having failed during
the rest period. In addition, the battery 1 temperature at the next stop
will be 115ºF. Prior temperatures on this EVA were 95ºF at the
start, 100ºF when they left the LM, and 108ºF at the start of
Station 6. The temperature at the end of EVA-2 had been 114ºF degrees.]

[Cernan - "I've got to believe that it's not batteries. We could start
to feel the Sun penetrating the suit on the EVA-3. We were driving into the
Sun, sitting still. We were not going in and out of shade. Everything that
was in the Sun, stayed in the Sun for twenty or thirty
minutes."]

166:36:14 Cernan: Boy, I tell you that. Every bump you go over on a
sideslope is just accentuated. (Pause)

166:36:25 Parker: Yeah, we don't think you're anywhere near Cochise.

166:36:31 Schmitt: Yeah. I agree.

166:36:32 Cernan: Yeah. I think it's over that rim up there.

166:36:37 Schmitt: That's just a big, shallow depression. (Pause)

[They are roughly 300 to 400 meters north of
Cochise.]

166:36:40 Cernan: All I'm doing is flying the 3.4-kilometer arc right
now.

[Cernan - "We do that a lot when you're flying an
approach. I don't know why I was doing that. Maybe it was the Sun angle or
the slope. It wasn't the direct route to where we were going; but, by
staying at 3.4 from the LM, we were going to get there."]

166:36:47 Parker: Say again there, Gene.

166:36:48 Schmitt: There's another one of those deep craters that
doesn't have a blocky rim.

166:36:57 Cernan: Okay. 214/3.4.

166:37:00 Parker: Copy.

166:37:03 Schmitt: That's one of the more striking characteristics of
the mantle are these craters that look, as far as the diameter-to-depth
ratio is concerned, like they ought to be fairly young. But there's no
blocks on the rim, and they seem to have this mantled appearance, just like
some of the large craters. (Pause)

166:37:26 Cernan: As I look up Wessex Cleft from just about abeam of
it...(Turning to avoid an obstacle) Let me get over here...It still shows
me an albedo change and a surface wrinkle-texture change.

[Gene is driving generally southeast as he drives his 3.4-km
arc as he approaches SWP. The Cleft is north, to his left; however, as he
maneuvers to avoid craters and rocks, occasionally he gets a look in that
direction.]

166:37:44 Schmitt: Yeah, I think so. You've got it at the same Sun
angle more or less, on part of it there.

166:37:48 Parker: Okay. Copy that. You guys may be getting just a
little far north...

166:37:49 Cernan: It's sort of a perfectly formed saddle in there.

166:37:50 Schmitt: Yeah.

166:37:51 Parker: ...You may want to head just a little south to
avoid running right into the middle of SWP Crater.

166:38:19 Schmitt: Bob, there's something I haven't mentioned, but if
one had time on the next (lunar) program (after Apollo)...

166:38:31 Cernan: I think that's SWP right there, Jack.

166:38:32 Schmitt: ...you can sample secondary craters, and they tend
to have blocks either in them or on one rim, suggesting that you could tell
directions if you put your mind to it. Directions of where the secondary
came from. These are small ones.

166:38:48 Cernan: Did we ever get a piece of glass in place?

166:38:50 Schmitt: Yes, I did yesterday.

166:38:51 Cernan: Documented in place?

166:38:52 Schmitt: Yep.

166:38:53 Cernan: Okay.

166:38:54 Schmitt: That's what I was trying to protect in the SRC
yesterday.

[Schmitt - "It strikes me - because of the casualness
of Bob's little jibe - that, here we are, two hundred thirty thousand miles
from Earth, third EVA, three and a half kilometers from the relative safety
of the LM, and it sounds like we're down at the local Circle K (a chain of
convenience stores), for crying out loud! Human beings and their
psychological adaptability is just unbelievable!"]

[Cernan - "There you were, in a space suit, two inches away from the
vacuum of the universe. Every time you made a move - from Earth orbit to
translunar coast to lunar orbit, out of the Command Module to the Lunar
Module, to the lunar surface, out of the Lunar Module, out on the surface in
your suit, jump in the Rover and drive out about as far as you can
theoretically walk back - you added a link in a chain that you have to
gobble back up to get home. And, yet, you only think about it when you have
to think about it."]

[During discussions with Pete Conrad and Alan Bean about the Apollo 12
mission, they said that the main factor limiting how far they got from the
LM was concern about the health of the spacecraft. If there was a problem
with the LM, they wanted to be able to get back relatively quickly so that
they could take care of it and/or leave. The suits and backpacks were of
lesser concern.]

[Cernan - "The health of the LM was always a concern. Based on an
accumulation of experience, by the time of Apollo 17 we had more faith in
the LM and, at least for our flight, actually powered it down. But my
personal feeling is that, should something have happened to the suit or the
Rover, I was on the spot to be able to do something about it. Whether I
could or not was another story. But I, at least, was in control. But if
I'm 3.6 kilometers from the Lunar Module and something happens in the
spacecraft, I'm not there to do anything about it. So, when you left the LM
out there all by itself, that was the weak link in the chain. If we had a
problem with the suit, we were going to scoot back home to the LM."]

[Schmitt - "I've really been searching my memories of all the flight
planning we did - and I did a lot of it for the EVAs - I don't remember
concerns about the LM ever coming up. I remember concerns about suit leaks,
about the energy levels it would take to walk, what was a reasonable
distance to walk, and things like that. Pete's flight was the first
pinpoint landing. We didn't know we were going to land as close to that
Surveyor as we did. And so the EVA planning was pretty general and we
thought a lot about what we were going to do if we didn't land close to it.
I just frankly don't remember the security of the LM being an issue. I may
be totally wrong. My thought in those days, as I recall, was that the
ground was going to be watching that LM very, very carefully and was going
to tell the crew. They were going to be close enough to get back in a hurry
anyway."]

[Cernan - "The ground could tell you, but they couldn't do anything.
They had absolutely no control over the LM. I've always felt - and this is
not a knock at the LM, because the LM was one of the finest flying machines
built for the purpose at hand - but I felt more comfortable in my suit. The
LM was literally built to just get the job done, while the suit was almost
over-engineered. When we pressurized the LM - whoop - it expanded like an
oil can. It didn't scare me, but you did realize that you were at the mercy
of a little tin can with a few motors running and blowers blowing and what
have you. We convinced ourselves we could have gotten in our suits in three
and a half minutes but, in the real world, we would have needed more
time..."]

[Schmitt - "I think there was a (vacuum) chamber test - something
associated with a chamber test. One of the tests was delayed because
somebody stuck a pencil through the skin of the LM."]

[Cernan - "It was your minimum housing requirements on the lunar
surface. Would I live in a LM for a month on the Moon? Aside from the lack
of volume and so forth, I don't think that would be a judicious approach. I
think you would have to get in something more stable. The LM is a good
transfer vehicle and we lived in it for three days. But I don't think it
would be adequate for any long period of time."]

[Schmitt - "You wouldn't want a lot of long-term activity going on in
there. There's just too much chance of damaging it. Every time we went in
and out, we'd bang against the DSKY."]

[Cernan - "We've had a long digression, but I think that the person who
utilizes this information for any reason - ten years, twenty years or, just
from a historical point of view, a hundred years from now - ought to know
the feelings of the people who were really there. It's an important part of
this document."]

166:39:11 Cernan: I'll tell you, if we don't concentrate, we end up...

166:39:40 Schmitt: SWP's a bigger hole than I thought it was.
(Pause) SWP even has some blocks in the wall.

166:39:53 Cernan: Yeah, but the eastern and southeastern rim of SWP
are just continuous...Ooh!...They're just continuous with the slopes of the
Sculptured Hills.

166:40:04 Parker: Okay. Copy that. (Pause)

166:40:16 Cernan: (To Bob) How does 238/4.2 sound for the beginning
of (Station) 8?

[Schmitt - "Because things were so ill-defined over here
at the Sculptured Hills, it was decided that we would pick the exact
place."]

[Cuff Checklist page LMP/CDR-18 indicates the general area in which they
intend to do Station 8. Gene is referring to the northern end of the area,
specifically to the spot marked 8A on both LMP/CDR-17 and LMP/CDR-18. He will
actually stop at 226/4.0, which is spot a bit north of 8A but - because of
the displacement of the LM from the planned landing site - at virtually the
same range.]

166:40:19 Schmitt: Hey, you're...

166:40:24 Cernan: May have to take these slopes just the most
comfortable way we can.

166:40:43 Parker: And remember again, Station 8 is a very flexible
area. You just get to a place where it looks like it's feasible to sample
the Sculptured Hills (material).

166:40:53 Schmitt: That's right.

166:40:54 Cernan: Yep. (Pause) Let me tell you, this Rover is a
machine. I don't know if it saw that hill we're climbing, but I did. (Long
Pause)

166:41:26 Schmitt: How's your...How're you doing?

166:41:28 Cernan: Doing fine. I'm trying to get around SWP over here
and start hitting the...

166:41:34 Schmitt: (The) East Massif has outcrops on it (that) I can
see now on the north side. And they, (like the North Massif outcrops), also
tend to have linear upper terminations. And some of those line up as if
there's roughly horizontal structure within the upper one-half of the East
Massif.

166:42:13 Schmitt: (To Gene) Go by that little dark crater over there. (To Bob) There's a very blocky-rimmed small crater, that's a dark-rim crater instead of a bright-rim (crater) like we'd seen some around that looked fresh. It partly may be the angle at which we're approaching it.

[Gene takes
22364 at about this point. A labeled version shows the location of the dark-rim crater.]

166:42:35 Cernan: Bob, we're on the southeastern rim of SWP at 226 and 3.6.

166:42:41 Schmitt: (To Gene) Why don't we get some samples of that
material in there.

166:43:03 Cernan: Okay, Bob. 226/3.6. There's a highly fragmental,
small crater about 30 or 40 meters across, right on the southeastern rim of
SWP. And most of the fragments are football size and smaller, and they're
very angular. And probably the inside of that rim is...

166:43:26 Schmitt: Turns out that they'll break. They're clods.

166:43:28 Cernan: Are they clods?

166:43:29 Schmitt: Yup.

166:43:30 Cernan: I guess that's going to be about 70 percent covered
on the inside of the rim with these things.

166:43:34 Schmitt: It's all instant rock (soil compacted in the
impact), but the crater rim looks dark compared to other fresh craters like
this that we've seen.

[Schmitt - "My erstwhile colleagues (in the lunar
geology community) don't like the term 'instant rock'. They call it
'regolith breccia'. I got taken to task at some talk I gave."]

[Cernan - "It is instant rock! (Jack laughs) I used to think of rock
forming over hundreds of thousands of years; but, all of a sudden, now I
know what it is. 'Instant rock' adds dynamics to the description."]

[Schmitt - "What's happening in this area is that we've gotten a whole
bunch of ejecta blankets from large craters like Henry, Cochise, and
Shakespeare on top of each other. It's a very thick regolith, and craters
which would have normally gotten to bedrock just penetrated farther into
regolith, formed a lot of instant rock, and that's what's been thrown up on the rims. That's what we've sampled here and that's what we'll see at Van Serg (Station 9)."]

166:44:08 Parker: ...the northernmost section of Station 8, if we can, of course.

166:44:14 Schmitt: (To Gene) Yeah. I think...I think we ought to head just about...

166:44:18 Cernan: Yeah. We'll get there.

166:44:20 Schmitt: Well...I think we ought to get below the highest peak up there because that seems to have the rocks on it. (Pause)

166:44:27 Cernan: I only see one rock (garbled)...

166:44:29 Schmitt: (Garbled) straight ahead.

166:44:29 Cernan: ...See that one. Of course, I don't know whether that came down. Doesn't look like it may have come down from the top. (Pause)

[Gene is correct. Once they stop and climb up the hill to examine the rock, they will find that it is glass coated and, therefore, that it was almost certainly thrown onto the mountain side from somewhere else.]

166:44:40 Schmitt: Certainly aren't many rocks. It's certainly not like the old North and South Massifs. (Pause) Yeah, there's one big rock over there. That doesn't look like...It might be a(n exotic)...(Pause)

[During the review, we discussed the matter of what Jack had intended to say and concluded that "exotic" - a rock thrown in from elsewhere - was most likely. Gene suggested "You ought to program a computer to think like Jack thinks, feed it this sentence, and let it finish it. (General laughter) It would be a tough task."]

166:45:01 Cernan: Well, let's head that way. That's about where the station is, anyway.

166:45:03 Schmitt: I think we're starting to see blocks. That one is so...so unusual...

166:45:13 Cernan: That's about the station. That's the northernmost
station anyway. There's another one there.

166:45:20 Schmitt: Well, this probably is...We can get the other
smaller population around it. I'm worried about that one being exotic to
the Sculptured Hills.

166:45:25 Cernan: Yeah, it doesn't look like it rolled...

166:45:27 Schmitt: No.

166:45:28 Cernan: But I don't see any others, do you?

166:45:30 Schmitt: Well, there's some small ones up in there. Off to
about the 2 o'clock position (relative to the direction of travel). But I
think that's all. We're going to have to be satisfied with small ones. Big
ones don't get down. There's some big ones way up on the slope.

[Schmitt - "I think we were still on the ejecta blanket
of a crater - maybe Bowen (or SWP) - big enough to have penetrated to the
subfloor and to have thrown rocks up the slope. So, what I was trying to do
was get us away from that and get as far up the hill as we could go. We
wound up at the northwest end of the Station 8 area."]

166:46:23 Cernan: What's it (the immediate area) look like? If it
doesn't look worthwhile stopping, I'll move on up over there.

166:46:27 Schmitt: Yeah, it looks like subfloor. I would recommend
that we...

166:46:29 Cernan: All right.

166:46:30 Schmitt: ...try to get up to some of those. I don't know
whether we can or not. What's your pitch indicating?

166:46:35 Cernan: Well, that doesn't mean anything.

[The pitch meter has been broken since early in the
mission.]

166:46:42 Schmitt: See that...Those two up there would be reasonably
well up the slope. (Pause)

166:46:57 Cernan: I have to park about 045 because I've got to be
pointing uphill so we can get out.

166:47:01 Parker: Okay. Any place you want to. 045 is fine.

166:47:03 Cernan: Jack, I'm going to park...

166:47:06 Schmitt: How about just the rim of that little crater there?

166:47:09 Cernan: Well, this is so level right here, Jack, I'm going
to just park it...

166:47:12 Schmitt: Well, I was just thinking on top of that crater is
closer to the...That's level, too, on the rim. And it'll give them a good
view of the sampling area. (Pause) I think we can...If we work on those
blocks there, we're in pretty good shape. (Pause)

166:47:26 Schmitt: Bob, we're directly downhill, and that is (to say,
directly downhill) from the highest point that I could see up on this first
Sculptured Hill. (Pause)

166:51:51 Cernan: Oh, there you are. I thought maybe you fell in that crater I'm looking at. (To Bob) Okay. I'm going to give you a TGE reading.

166:51:56 Parker: Roger. Give us a mark.

166:52:00 Cernan: Our fender's beginning to fade and, uh-oh, the clip came off (the replacement fender but not the Rover) on the inside; that's what's wrong. We'll have to fix that before we start. The outside one's holding, but the inside one's not.

166:52:13 Schmitt: Bob, all the blocks bigger than 20 centimeters that I've looked at up here are subfloor gabbro in appearance.

166:52:24 Parker: Copy that.

166:52:26 Schmitt: I've looked at about five. (Pause)

[Fendell reaches the TV's counter-clockwise stop, and then reverses direction.]

166:52:35 Parker: Did we get a mark there on the gravimeter, Gene?

[Gene had not given a mark, having been distracted by the fender clip.]

166:52:40 Cernan: Thirty seconds ago, Bob.

166:52:42 Parker: Roger. I copied it. Just wanted to check. (Pause)

166:52:51 Cernan: Okay, Jack. You find anything up there?

166:52:53 Schmitt: Gene, I'm going to go up and look at this one rock. Why don't you set up and sample any one of these other big ones. They're all the same. Like the one near the Rover. And I'll go up and try to get this big one down there.

166:53:10 Cernan: Well, okay.

166:53:12 Schmitt: It's the only one left to look at, but right now we're dealing with subfloor material, I think.

166:53:17 Cernan: What about some of these little fragments that seem to be sitting more on the surface?

166:53:20 Schmitt: Yeah, we're supposed to rake here. We'll get those with the rake.

[Fendell finds Gene north of the Rover at an appreciable distance. Jack is beyond him, hopping upslope and approximately three times farther away.]

[Schmitt - "With that slope, the kangaroo hop was the only way to move."]

[Cernan - "You couldn't really go one foot in front of the other
uphill, because you can't get your foot high to take that step. So you hop."]

[During the Apollo 16 EVA deployment at 121:22:45, shortly after the loss of the heatflow experiments, John steps up onto a 20 cm rock and then down on the other side. This is the only 'step up' and 'step down' that I know of in the Apollo video record.]

166:53:23 Cernan: That one up there, by the way, is sitting on the surface. These others are submerged.

166:53:27 Schmitt: Yeah. That's why I want to look at it.

166:53:29 Cernan: You don't have a hammer, but if you need me, I'll come up there because I think that may be worthwhile.

[Gene makes his way cross slope to a boulder due north of the Rover. This is the sample 78135 location as indicated in the Station 8 plan map. Jack is climbing farther uphill to another rock, which is the sample 78220 location. Fendell starts to follow Gene, doesn't find him, and goes back to Jack. Gene's cross-Sun stereo pictures of the rock near the Rover are AS17-146-
22365 and
22366. Ulli Lotzmann has created a stereo-image from the pair.]

[Frame
22367
is a "locator" to the Rover. This excellent picture shows the TV camera pointed off to the left and the high-gain antenna pointed back
towards Earth, which is over the South Massif. Note that the low-gain antenna, which is partially hidden by the high-gain is also pointed at Earth. The SEP antenna is behind Jack's seat and the rake for the explosive charges is visible on the back of the Rover. The East Massif is at the upper right. Readers should note the dark blemish on the East Massif foothill above and slightly to the right of the SEP antenna. This is the outcrop area that Gene notes as he and Jack leave Station 8 at 167:39:41.]

166:53:56 Parker: A reminder, 17. We'd like to have you leaving here in three-zero minutes to make up some of the (extra) time we spent at Stations 6 and 7.

[Fendell finds Jack leaning over the upslope boulder. The plan map of Station 8, extracted from the Apollo 17 Preliminary Science Report, indicates that the boulder is approximately 53 meters ENE of the Rover. The TV record suggests that the boulder is directly uphill from the Rover. According to the mission report, Jack's heart rate peaks at about 167:05 at 122 beats per minute. Gene's peaks at about 167:10 at about 122 beats. These times correspond, roughly, to the times when each of them makes their way back downhill to the Rover. However, the uncertainty in the plotted times is unknown and these peaks may also represent the climbs up to the rock.]

[Cernan - "I got tired just watching this. We weren't breathing hard; but Jack's voice, when he got up to the rock, was forceful - which we tended to do in those circumstances. You had to blow it out."]

166:54:07 Parker: And we'd also remind you that we'd like a rake soil sample here, too. That may be the only way we try and pick up some stuff other than subfloor, if that, indeed, has come down from the top of the Sculptured Hills.

166:54:20 Schmitt: Okay, Bob. This rock is a big chunk of shattered,
but still visible, bluish-gray anorthosite. It's glass-coated, and it
actually looks like it's vesicular. I'm going to roll it downhill so we can work on it. Well, I'll document it first. (Pause)

[Schmitt - "Good idea, Jack."]

[Jack has taken cross-Sun photos of the boulder and is now taking a down-Sun from the right at a distance about equal to his shadow length. His cross-Sun stereos are AS17-142-
21698,
21699, and
21700. His down-Sun is
21701.]

166:55:01 Schmitt: Did you copy that?

166:55:02 Parker: Roger. I copy that. We'll be watching it coming.

166:55:08 Schmitt: Okay. But the point is, as Gene said, it's the only rock - (the only) big one anyway - in the area that I see that's perched on the surface as if it might have rolled here.

166:55:26 Parker: Okay. Copy that, Jack. (Pause)

166:55:36 Schmitt: But I don't see a (boulder) track.

[Fendell zooms in on Jack. The rock is perhaps one third of a meter high and two-thirds of a meter across. From later evidence, it is also about two-thirds of a meter long in the direction away from the camera. It is also broader on the bottom than the top.]

166:55:42 Cernan: Man, this one here is tough as a...

166:55:45 Schmitt: Well, we can get some small ones.

166:55:47 Cernan: Yeah, that I'm going to do. I tell you, this one is so...

[Jack flips the rock over with his right foot. It starts to roll toward the Rover, but veers toward the right. Jack follows and kicks it again to keep it going. After a short while, it lands in a shallow depression and stops.]

166:57:30 Cernan: These others all look...You're right, Jack, they look like what we've been sampling (that is, the subfloor gabbro). (Pause) And they're all pretty well mantled except the ones you got up there. There's one more piece I see on the side of that crater that may not be.

166:57:43 Schmitt: Bag 545 will be soil from under that anorthosite boulder. (Pause) Bob, the only thing that bothers me about that boulder being subfloor - I mean Sculptured Hills - is that it's glass-coated.

166:58:12 Parker: Copy that.

[Gene reaches the rolled boulder. Jack is still sampling soil at the original boulder site, this time holding the sample bag low and at arm's length. He is holding the scoop nearer the handle than the head.]

166:58:13 Schmitt: It may have been thrown in here by an impact. (Pause; turning) Oh, you're here!

[Jack goes down to Gene.]

166:58:23 Cernan: Well, let's sample it, and then roll it down.

166:58:25 Schmitt: Well, okay. I never would have moved it if I thought you were coming up.

166:58:28 Cernan: Well, I wasn't coming up; but I looked at some of those others, and there's only one more...

166:58:32 Schmitt: Okay. Well, I got it documented up in place. Let's...That's not the...I think that's the side that was down. Let me roll it over...

166:58:40 Cernan: (Placing the gnomon) Well, let me get a piece of that side since it was underneath. Then we'll roll it over and get a piece of the other side.

166:58:43 Schmitt: Good thinking. (Pause) Ah...Okay, yeah. Let's do it (take documentation photos) again. Except I got dust all over it (meaning the rock).

166:58:56 Cernan: (Left of the rock) Well...

166:58:57 Schmitt: (Right of the rock) The albedo...The down-Sun picture's not going to mean much. Let me get this (soil) sample in your bag. (Pause; going to Gene) I think we ought to change your bag because the stuff's going to start flying out.

166:59:12 Cernan: Okay.

166:59:13 Schmitt: It won't stay closed.

[Frames
22369 and
22370 are Gene's stereo photos of the exotic boulder, taken prior to sampling. Ulli Lotzmann has created a stereo-image from the pair.]

166:59:14 Cernan: Jack, after this one, there's only...There's one more in that crater (near the Rover). It may be from that crater, but I don't know.

166:59:21 Schmitt: How's your hand for hammering?

166:59:23 Cernan: Ohhhh.

166:59:25 Schmitt: This will be easy. This will be easy.

166:59:26 Cernan: The old hammering hand...

166:59:27 Schmitt: This will be an easy one, Gene. (Pause)

[Gene moves to the right of the rock and slightly below it, and hits it six times with the hammer. Jack moves upslope of the rock. Gene is raising the hammer to head height.]

[Cernan - "I still can remember the reverberation through my body when I hit a hard rock like that. Your whole body would feel the impact of that hammer. By this time, I wasn't feeling inhibited from taking good solid swings. But I would have hated to miss it and hit my shin."]

[Schmitt - "I could feel it through the ground, through my feet, like a minor earthquake. And you could see where I moved when you started to swing? I never stood in front of you."]

[On at least two occasions during Apollo 16, Charlie Duke lost his grip on the hammer. Gene never did.]

[Schmitt - "That's one reason why I didn't use it. I never felt like I had control of it"]

[Journal Contributor Tomas Lundberg notes that Jack did use the hammer once on the Moon, at Camelot starting at 146:41:52.]

166:59:40 Cernan: Two pieces for you.

166:59:42 Schmitt: Okay. Let me...

166:59:43 Cernan: Oh, that's a pretty one inside!

166:59:44 Schmitt: Well, it's stained by the glass coating.

166:59:46 Cernan: Oh!

166:59:47 Schmitt: It's stained by that glass coating.

166:59:49 Cernan: That's a pretty one inside! Can you get that? Here, take my hand. (Pause)

[They are standing side-by-side. Using Gene's hand for support, Jack kneels to get the fragment, then gets up.]

167:00:00 Schmitt: Thank you.

167:00:02 Cernan: While I'm at it, I'm going to chop another piece off right here.

[Schmitt - "Human beings are basically lazy. And you naturally find the easiest way to get to it. One thing I noticed back at Station 7 is that, the first time I dropped the scoop, I stepped on it to get the handle up so I could grasp it. The second time, it was over at the rock and I just leaned against the rock and reached down."]

[Cernan - "That stepping to get the handle is something I do on the golf course all the time. If I happen to drop a sand wedge along the edge of the green - while I'm putting - and I go back to get it. Jack's right, we're lazy and we pick the easiest way out. I always step on the face of that club."]

[Schmitt - "I play golf, but I never do that. My clubs are too good for that. (General laughter)"]

[Cernan - "Jack never needs but one club when he's up to the green, and the putter's got a flat face and it's awful hard..."]

167:00:51 Schmitt: Yeah. It (the fragment) got mixed with local soil. (Pause) I'm pretty sure (that's the bottom). Let's turn it over. I think I'd recognize the top, although it's got dust all over it now.

167:01:05 Cernan: I think I'll get one more swap (rhymes with "wrap") off there. I don't want to seal this. Let me get another swap off there. I can get it.

167:01:10 Schmitt: Okay. (Pause)

[Gene hands Jack the sample bag and then leans on the rock so that he can retrieve his dropped hammer. He gets up easily and then strikes the rock seven times.]

167:01:37 Schmitt: Well, that (fragment) disappeared.

[Gene changes his position from the right of the rock to above it.]

167:01:38 Cernan: (I'll) hit it this way. One time. (Pause)

[Gene changes his mind and shifts back to the right. He hits three blows.]

167:01:55 Cernan: Boy, is that pretty inside. Whoo! We haven't seen anything like this! I haven't. Unless you've been holding out on me.

[Gene strikes the rock nine times.]

167:02:02 Schmitt: No, this is a nice crystalline rock.

[From the way that both of them react, it is evident that, after the final blow, a fragment flies off to the right.]

167:02:05 Cernan: (Turning to look) Okay, I see that one.

167:02:07 Schmitt: Where did that one go?

167:02:08 Cernan: That's a good one. I'll go get it with my tongs. That's a good one. That one I worked too hard to get. (Pause)

[Gene goes about 20 meters to the right of the boulder, using a skipping gait as he goes slightly downhill.]

[Cernan - "I was braking as I was going downhill and then I hopped on two feet coming back up. You can see the degree of that slope. It was a lot of work; I wasn't making much progress." Frame 22379 from the pan Gene will take at 167:07:20 shows the footprints Gene's makes during the little excursion, skipping out on the left and hopping back on the right.]

167:02:22 Cernan: Hey, I see how it (the Moon) makes boulder tracks! I just made one. It just skipped along (and) made those little pothole craters as it went.

[When Gene and Fendell return to the rock, Jack is examining it on hands and knees.]

167:02:30 Schmitt: Hey, Houston. This is about a 50-50 mixture of what looks like maskelynite or at least blue-gray plagioclase, and a very, let's say, light yellow-tan mineral, probably orthopyroxene. It's fairly coarsely crystalline.

167:02:57 Parker: Copy that.

[Cernan - (Tongue firmly in cheek) "I had that description written in my checklist, too. (General laughter) And, when I had to go pick up the chip of that boulder, Jack immediately picked up the cue and described it himself. Jack, this was going to be my big moment! You were going to let me do the whole thing, but you couldn't stand it."]

167:02:59 Cernan: Which bag do you want? (Pause)

167:03:07 Parker: Okay. When you guys get done with that rock, we'd like to get to the rake sample, please. And that's probably just as well done by the Rover as anyplace else. We don't seem to see anything worthwhile here doing besides that.

[From his hands and knees position, Jack gets a sample bag and hands it to Gene.]

167:03:20 Schmitt: (Referring to the fragment) You got it?

167:03:21 Cernan: Yeah. (Pause)

[Jack pushes back off of the rock but can't get his PLSS back far enough to rise. On the third try, he rocks his PLSS back far enough that he starts to tip over backwards. Once the PLSS is over his feet, he rises and hops back under the PLSS to catch himself.]

167:03:29 Cernan: Okay. That went in the same bag, Bob, as the rest of the chips from the bottom. All the chips from the bottom are in 464.

167:04:29 Cernan: Okay, that's good. Let's move the gnomon, and we won't roll it over on the gnomon. (Long Pause)

[Gene moves the gnomon well away of the rock to the left. He then gets down on hands and knees and flips the rock with his right hand.]

167:04:44 Schmitt: Watch it. Watch it. (Pause)

[The rock rolls about 2 meters, landing with the same side up.]

167:04:49 Schmitt: Oh, yeah! That other side is the one that was up. (Pause)

167:05:03 Schmitt: (Kicking the boulder over) Well, I'm not sure now. It's got so much dust on it. But let's...(Pause)

[Gene gets up in two tries; then gets the
gnomon.]

167:05:17 Cernan: That's not going to roll down that hill unless we get it on edge.

167:05:20 Schmitt: No. (Pause)

167:05:24 Cernan: Get it from up here. Boy, look at that glass on it. That's what you said, huh?

167:05:29 Schmitt: Yup.

167:05:30 Cernan: Which side was the glass on when you looked at it?

167:05:32 Schmitt: It's on all sides. It's on all sides.

167:05:34 Parker: 17, there's probably not much point in spending a lot of time out here trying to decide which is the top. It's not big enough, anyway, really to worry about...

167:05:41 Schmitt: We're not.

167:05:43 Parker: ...the top and bottom samples that are
radiologically significant.

[Schmitt - "I think that what I had in mind was to get top and bottom samples for solar wind dating. We also had a plan to get soil samples from way underneath boulders, samples that had been shielded from cosmic rays. Bob was thinking about the cosmic ray issue; I had in mind solar wind dating of when the boulder got there. The solar wind doesn't penetrate more than 500 Angstroms (5x10-8 m); whereas cosmic ray secondaries wind up at two or three meters. So we were both right; I just never explained to him what I was doing."]

167:05:48 Schmitt: Well, let's...(To Bob) If you don't want another sample, then we can go ahead.

167:05:51 Cernan: Well, let me get a piece of this glass.

167:05:55 Schmitt: Righto. (Long Pause)

[The fragment comes off on hit number seventeen. Some of the blows are audible, unless the sound is being produced by Gene's microphone tapping on the neckring or some similar phenomenon.]

167:06:10 Cernan: There it is. (Pause)

167:06:17 Schmitt: Okay. Let me try to get them.

[Gene gets a sample bag from Jack, who is collecting the fragment with the scoop.]

167:07:57 Cernan: I'm looking back at the complex - Cochise and
Shakespeare - and I can see the LM. (Long Pause)

[Cochise, Shakespeare, the LM, and Van Serg Craters are labeled in a detail from 22387.]

167:08:36 Cernan: (Looking uphill) Hey, Bob. One interesting thing up here, you can see the erosional pattern of the talus (or) the mantle that - I call it a mantle, but (I mean) the talus - that's on the Sculptured Hills. There's little...little boulder tracks of all sizes from (means "made by") all these little clods. And they all, of course, point downhill or nearly downhill.

167:09:00 Parker: Okay. Copy that.

167:09:04 Schmitt: Hey, Bob. In the interest of time, I'll document
this (rake sample) without the gnomon.

[Jack's "before" photos of the rake site are
AS17-142-21706 to 21711. Note that he has used the rake to give scale and a
shadow.]

167:09:30 Cernan: Whee! Boy, when you do this, and you're going downslope, that first step is a long one! (Pause)

167:09:39 Schmitt: I'm having...(Pause)

167:09:45 Cernan: (Doing long, two-footed hops) This is the best way for me to travel. Uphill or downhill.

167:09:48 Schmitt: What's that?

167:09:50 Cernan: Like this. Two-legged hop.

167:09:53 Schmitt: There seems...Yeah.

167:09:54 Cernan: And on level ground, I can skip. I don't like that
loping thing.

167:09:59 Schmitt: Oh, the loping's the only way to go.

[Fendell can't keep up with Gene.]

167:10:01 Cernan: Well...See, when I'm on level ground, I can skip. But this two-legged thing is great! Man, I can cover ground like a kangaroo! (Pause)

[Cernan - "When you were hopping, I felt that you could really take off and still have significant control if you anticipated and shock-absorbed your landing. It really was the only way to travel downhill. I think that if you stride on a slope, you shift your weight too much from one foot to the other and, in one-sixth g, once you start to shift your weight your more apt to go kattiwampus (meaning "out of kilter")."]

[Schmitt - "Well, you know, it's hard to stride going downhill here on Earth, too. If you go down a twenty degree slope and you start striding, you just don't feel like you've got much control."]

[Cernan - "Yeah. And when you hop, you can lean back like you do in skis and control your center-of-gravity and not have it out in front of you. (Pause) I can relate to this. This is fun."]

167:10:20 Cernan: Oh, okay. You documented already; I was just going to put this (gnomon) in the field-of-view anyway.

167:10:56 Cernan: Well, what do you think about that? There's not much (that is, no rocks) in here worth...Man, there's just nothing...This
has been totally mantled with talus. Well, it is; because that downhill
pattern goes right down the slope of this crater, and...Actually, it goes
upslope of the crater! This may be on a ray somewhere. Because it goes
right downhill...This little, skinny boulder-trail pattern goes right up the
slope.

167:11:33 Schmitt: (Still raking) I think those are later than the
crater by a long ways.

167:13:15 Cernan: (Getting a sample bag ready) The kilogram is in 566.

[As can be seen in
21706, the sides of the rake forward of the handle are made of metal sheet rather than being tines. Therefore, Jack can tilt the rake and turn it into a big scoop.]

167:13:19 Parker: Copy that. (Pause) And, remaining here, we'd have primarily a trench, if you fellas think it's feasible. We'd like to be moving in one-one minutes. Eleven minutes. (Pause) And we could use a pan from this lower location also, probably.

167:13:36 Cernan: (To Jack) Why don't you go back and dig a trench at the Rover?

167:14:07 Cernan: No, it'll stay. (Pause) We're going to have to put it in mine, though. (Pause) Well, let me try. Since we're going to unload your bag, this may be the last one. That's the last one for your bag.

167:15:04 Cernan: Boy, almost pure white and very friable. Oh, boy, is it. Pure white! Right out of a small little pit crater on the side of this crater I just walked in, Houston. And it's pure white, very friable. I got about, well, one big piece and several small in 567.

167:15:37 Schmitt: (On his way to the Rover) Bob, the walls of the big craters around here - that is, the ones that are, say, 15 meters in diameter - tend to be a little bit lighter albedo than ones down in the mantled area. (Pause) I'm afraid those pictures on that rake may be through a dust-colored lens.

167:17:02 Cernan: And, while you're digging that trench, we've got the pan to get, but I want to fix this fender.

[Fendell finds Jack leaving Gene's seat, headed for the gate.]

[Schmitt - "The level of emotion seems to have dropped off a little bit. We'd been walking up and down that hill for quite a
while."]

167:17:06 Schmitt: I guess the pan's mine, isn't it, this one?

167:17:08 Cernan: Yeah, it is. And I want to fix the fender before...

167:17:10 Schmitt: Okay.

167:17:11 Cernan: ...before we leave. (Garbled)...

167:17:12 Parker: Okay. We agree with that, and you might get us...

167:17:13 Cernan: ...one, and I'll tighten...

167:17:15 Parker: ...you might get us the gravimeter reading there, Gene, while you're at it. And if you have time, you might drop the gravimeter on the ground, and we'll get a reading with it on the ground as well.

167:17:49 Cernan: Gently. I can't find a general level spot, but
I'll level it. If it takes pictures...(correcting himself), or, if it does
it's thing on the Rover (which isn't very level), it'll do its thing here.

[Frame
21719 is Jack's down-Sun "before" of the trench site, showing Gene in the background taking the TGE off the Rover.]

[Cernan - "The reason the camera comes off is that I've
got to get close to the fender. The camera keeps you about a foot away from
anything. Plus you bang up the lens."]

[Schmitt - "There's something I don't think I mentioned back at Station
7. We were talking about manipulating things more easily. When I was
getting samples into a bag, I had mastered how to do that without the camera
interfering; where, on the first and second EVAs - like Station 3 - I
hadn't figured it out."]

[Cernan - "If you had to bag something yourself, you had both a vision
and an access problem. So you had to find out where your arms met each
other above or below the camera."]

167:18:36 Parker: And how's the trench going, Jack?

167:18:43 Schmitt: Oh, down. (Pause)

[Fendell zooms in on the rock at the rake site.]

167:18:50 Cernan: Oh, man, I tell you. When you call for cold water,
does it come in nicely. Whew! (Pause) I'm really happy with this fender,
really happy with it. (Pause)

167:19:17 Schmitt: Bob, I have gotten a wall now, in one place,
that's standing about 25 centimeters high. And it shows no apparent change
in the texture of the soil to that depth; except possibly at the lower 5
centimeters, there's some zones that might be slightly more granular.
Particle size may be up a little bit.

[Jack's speech pattern has slowed noticeably. He spends time
searching for words.]

[Schmitt - "Part of the reason is that I'm tired. It also happens when
I'm thinking and trying to talk simultaneously - which I never did very
well."]

167:19:55 Parker: Okay. I copy that. Probably just three samples
will be sufficient, then.

167:20:02 Schmitt: I think so. Maybe four.

[Schmitt - "It was a judgment call based on how deep the trench was. You'd take one at the bottom, one is the middle, and a skim off the top."]

167:20:25 Cernan: Nope. (Pause) Boy, we're sure giving this suspension system a workout. Whew! I can even see it. (Long Pause)

[Cernan - "I was leaning over the fender, putting pressure on the Rover; and I think I was bouncing it up and down. I think that each wheel had a V-type torsion bar (see
20453) because the Rover had been folded up for storage in the LM. We didn't have shock absorbers because we would have had dust problems."]

[Schmitt - "The Rover was parked with the rear end downhill, so you were more or less able to stand there looking at it."]

[Fendell finds Jack southeast of the Rover, trying to angle the scoop head. He had it oriented vertically to dig the trench and now wants to set it at right angles to the handle so that he can sample the trench. Unfortunately, the locking mechanism is now thoroughly fouled with dust. He bangs the scoop head with his hand.]

167:21:02 Schmitt: Well, everything's getting awful dusty.

167:21:05 Cernan: Boy, everything is stiff. Everything is just full of dust. There's got to be a point where the dust just overtakes you, and everything mechanical quits moving.

[Schmitt - "Anyone planning to work on the Moon or Mars ought to have Gene's statement engraved on their forehead and on the inside of their glasses."]

167:21:14 Schmitt: (Still struggling) Like scoops. (Pause)

167:21:22 Cernan: I'm not sure whether Detroit would like the fender, but it will sure buy the fix. Okay, it's fixed.

167:21:31 Parker: Okay. Copy that.

167:21:33 Cernan: And I'm happy; I like it.

167:21:34 Parker: Roger. We copy that. And copy it again.

[Jack gives up on the scoop head and sets it at angle of about 20 degrees from vertical.]

167:21:40 Parker: And we'd like to have you guys moving in about 3 minutes.

[Schmitt - "This confirms what I thought back when we were going through Station 7 - that the 90 degree angle was something I'd worked out in order to bag samples more easily when I was working alone. I'd hoped to do that here while Gene was doing something else; but, now, Gene's come over and we'll go back to two-man sampling routine."]

167:21:55 Cernan: (Going to Jack) Let me get back on some lighter cooling here, too, to save some water. Okay, now.

167:22:05 Schmitt: Okay; the bottom 10 centimeters...

167:22:07 Cernan: Let me get your bags...I left my camera off when I...

167:22:10 Schmitt: ...of a...

[Gene gets one of Jack's sample bags.]

167:22:12 Schmitt: Well, shoot! I didn't take a picture of the
trench after I dug it. Let me take one shot. (Pause)

[Frame 21741 shows a dramatic secondary crater made by projectile ejected from some distant impact. As indicated in a labeled detail, the projectile was moving from left to right when it hit. Note the spray of ejecta extending to the right.]

[Schmitt - (To Gene) "I don't know if you were aware of it or not, but one of the most successful experiments that we conducted was the portable gravimeter. They got great readings all across the valley; and the interpretation is great about the depth of the basalt fill in the valley - about two kilometers deep."]

[Cernan - "I'm glad; and I do think I remember that. But it was always a pain number one in the butt."]

[Schmitt - "And what it tells you is that the valley used to be almost five kilometers deep before it filled up. The eruption of mare basalt started very soon after the valley formed; but there's as much as a hundred million years of play (meaning 'uncertainty'), there. Serenitatis formed at something like 3.8 billion years ago - something like that - and the oldest basalt that we brought back - from Station 5 - came out at about 3.7 something. Nobody knows for sure how many flows there were or how thick they were. Some of the late basalts in Imbrium are relatively thin - ten meters or so. Some of the layers that they see in Hadley Rille are relatively thin. But whether that applies to the stuff deeper down, nobody knows. You may have had pretty thick cooling units. It just depends on how
fast that stuff came out. Probably most of the basalts - in the early
phases, anyway - when the flows first start in a basin like Serenitatis, it probably erupts from literally millions of centers. It's not like out on
the West Mesa of Albuquerque where you had a single crack and that's where
the basalt came up. Initially, a basin like Serenitatis - 500 kilometers
across - is fractured to beat all hell and, so, anything coming up from
below has an infinite number of choices. And then, gradually, most of those
seal off and the later flows come out of a few, discrete, individual
eruptions."]

167:27:02 Cernan: I've got to dust that thing (the TGE) the next time
around. Jack, we've got to do some bag (SCB) changing here.

167:27:10 Schmitt: Yup.

167:27:12 Cernan: I'll get those things with my tongs. You can't get them. You'd have to bend over. Every time you jump around, you come close to losing something. (Pause)

167:27:35 Cernan: (Arriving with the tongs and picking up the first sample bag) I'll just take them back there. Put them under the seat.

167:27:38 Schmitt: Okay. (Pause) You want me to take that one?

167:27:42 Cernan: (Now getting the second sample bag) No, I got it.

167:27:43 Schmitt: Okay. (Pause)

[They head toward the Rover.]

[Cernan - "Coming down those shallow slopes is poetry in motion. That's productive use of your time. If you could do something like
helicopter skiing - have somebody drop you off at the top and pick you up at
the bottom - you could really cover a lot of territory."]

[Schmitt - "In that Essex study, my proposal for the Mars part of it
was that you have a Rover that you can run either manually or automated. So
if the pair were out working, you could have somebody else, say back at the
base or the lander, remotely move it to where you want it. And then, after
you leave, it can be operated remotely from Earth or from Mars orbit. I
don't think it would be a big weight penalty; all it is, is
electronics."]

[Another sample falls out of Jack's SCB. It comes out in the forward
direction and into Jack's field-of-view before it hits the ground. He stops and turns to look.]

167:31:33 Cernan: Okay. I guess we're ready to head on out. Do you
agree?

167:31:36 Parker: Okay. And, Gene, when you go to change the LCRU, we'd like you to turn it to Off. O-F-F, on the Power switch, the Internal Power, External switch. And we'll be reading you through the LM. It will give you a chance to cool down the LCRU on the way home to Station 9.

[Schmitt - "I think that I was getting so that I didn't
quite trust Houston. They kept having us fool around with the SEP and my
feeling was that it was probably gone. So I'm trying to prod them a little
bit, having just told them that it was 120 (degrees) and my memory, at the time, was probably that that was way outside the limits. Literally, the science room was leading us down the garden path on the SEP, because all this SEP stuff we were doing was wasting time. It had quit working when? Sometime in the first EVA, didn't it? As with the (long-period) gravimeter, they should have bit the bullet far sooner than they did. They knew what the limits were, but they kept having us dust it and tape it!"]

[At 167:59:07, Parker will tell the crew that the SEP receiver turns itself off at 108 degrees. The temperature was 103 degrees at 163:43:51 at the start of the EVA but was 110 degrees by the time they got to Station 6. According to the Preliminary Science Report, the receiver switch was - unfortunately - in the Standby position, and no data was obtained during that drive. We note that Jack had reported putting the switch in the On position at the start of the traverse at 164:19:32. According to the Preliminary Science Report, some data had been recorded during EVA-2 on the outbound drive to Station 2 and on the inbound drive from Station 4. The crew reported a SEP temperature of 105 degrees when they got to Station 2. We note that the SEP temperature was 112 degrees throughout the inbound EVA-2 traverse, higher than the supposed cutoff, and yet data was supposedly obtained.]

[TV off.]

[Schmitt - "I was wearing my visor with the lower edge at about eye
level and, with it there, all you're getting is indirect sunlight reflected
off the surface. And you don't go around staring at the Sun, anyway."]

[The Sun elevation is about 38 degrees. It was 13 degrees at
landing.]

167:32:23 Cernan: Do you read us, Bob, through the LM?

167:32:26 Parker: Roger. We read you through the LM. Do you read us through the LM?

167:32:31 Cernan: Yeah. Not as well, but we're reading you.

167:32:33 Parker: Okay. And the temperature limit, Jack, is 160. We'll just leave it as is until we get back to the LM.

[This may be a temperature at which physical damage may occur to some of the SEP components. Bob doesn't mention the 108 degree shut off until 167:59:07, when they get to Station 9.]

167:32:40 Schmitt: Okay. I was going to say, we could take it out
and put it under the seat or something, but that sounds all right.

167:34:37 Cernan: That one was coming. I keep trying to blow the
dust off my camera, which is very frustrating.

167:34:42 Schmitt: Very ineffective, too. (Pause)

[Cernan - "At least I fell
off-camera."]

167:34:50 Cernan: (Preparing to mount the Rover again) Okay. Do we try that trick again? (Long Pause) You know that happened on an upslope getting on the Rover. Okay. I'm all locked in. Let me know when you are. How come we haven't deployed any charges? I guess the last one...I remember when that one is. Okay.

[Cernan - "It may be that I just fell on my ass trying to get on the Rover. But I never had problems getting up, and that's why I'm confused as to what this is."]

[Gene takes a moment to re-read the dialog starting at 167:33:28.]

[Schmitt - "The thing I don't understand is why you couldn't do a
push-up."]

[Cernan - "I don't understand either. I just don't recall that at
all."]

[Schmitt - "You know what it may have been? You may have started to
kick to get on the Rover, then fell, and you were lying next to the
Rover..."]

[Cernan - "Caught by the slope against the Rover."]

[Schmitt - "Yes. Which meant you couldn't rotate backwards. And my gratuitous advice was to get your feet downhill! (General laughter) And you must have had a feeling at some other time - probably Station 6 or 7 - that you were coming close to missing (the seat)."]

[The dialog at 166:48:26 and following indicates that Gene parked the Rover pointed into the hill and without much of a sideslope. This suggests that Gene fell with his feet uphill. To get up by himself, he had to get his feet pointed downhill - as Jack suggested - and, because he had the Rover next to him, getting turned around would have been difficult.]